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Nobody’s child: the case of Child I

It takes a lot to make a judge at the Family Division of the High Court angry. Faced with a daily diet of disintegrating marriages, custody battles and broken lives, it's not surprising that some might become inured to examples of human suffering. But the case of Child I, a six year-old boy with a serious heart complaint, born in Orkney and then fostered by his second cousin, who lives near Cambridge, enraged Mr Justice Hedley so much that he had to leave the court to collect himself.

Hedley heard that Orkney Islands Council (OIC) had stopped payments to the child's foster family and wrangled with Cambridgeshire County Council over the legal costs of allowing the O family, which has looked after him since he was 20 months old, to become his legal guardians.

"As I listened to these matters, disbelief was not the only thought or emotion that I